Researches show that sounds, in particular music, can have a beneficial effect on the listeners. Generally, listeners by listening to a specific music track may increase their level of relaxation and reduce anxiety, pain, and therefore the consumption of sedatives and pain killers, such as morphine.
Certain type of music or nature sounds may be considered as having a healing effect on listeners by reducing anxiety, stress and pain.
Undoubtedly, the positive effect of specific sounds and sound stimulation on people suffering different disease has been demonstrated.
For example, patients of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) generally experience delirium which is probably the single most common acute disorder affecting ICU patients. Delirium is an acute confusional state which is common to severe neuropsychiatric syndrome and produces attentional deficits, severe disorganization of behavior, cognitive deficits and psychotic features such as hallucinations and delusions. Exposing ICU patients to specific sounds and music tracks may prevent delirium and improves patients' visual and acoustic conditions, i.e. avoiding loss of the patients' sense of place and time.
However, the positive influence of particular sounds or music stimuli is way more effective if the patient's personal preferences are taken into account.
Indeed, one of the key issues is how to account for personal differences among patients, due to their different taste and preferences. For example, a music track with slow tempo may be disliked by a listener and it will not induce on him a relaxing effect, while on other listeners the very same music tracks may induce the opposite effect.
US 2010/0191037 relates to the use of music in connection with cancer therapy. The method modulates the mood in a person by filtering a play list of music tracks creating a progressive modulation of mood from the initial mood to the target mood, by exposing the listener to that play list of music tracks.
US 2007/0176920 describes a system for providing a personalized experience to a person in a medical environment. However, the personalized experience is obtained through a limited selection within the hospital database content and the only interaction of the person is a manual selection between the different content that the hospital database provides.
The inventor of the present invention has appreciated that an improved method for producing a personalized sounds database is of benefit, and has in consequence devised the present invention.